Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c11.s5.3

c11.s5.3

¹ The claim that Prākritie dialects became very early the ruling speech of the people superseding Sanskrit cannot be well supported. They were subsequent to the Mantra literature and to the earliest epic (not mere *ākhyānas* or *itihāsas*), Brāhmaṇas, Upanishads, and Āraṇyakas (800-600 B.C.). The necessary interval of time is to be allowed for the complete separation of the literary and vulgar speech. The place of the Epic must be found either before the decay of speech had rendered Sanskrit unintelligible to the warrior classes of the populace or after the general revival of Sanskrit in the second and third centuries A.D. The latter view is not quite in accord with our conception of the history of language and literature. Besides, we have references to the *Mahābhārat* and *Ramāyaṇa* in the *Kauṭilīya* (300 B.C.) and the *Mahābhāshya* (150 B.C.). The fact, besides, cannot be doubted that the Epics constituting the fifth Veda were meant to be studied by ordinary worldly people, warriors, husbandmen, and ladies, just as the four Vedas and the Brahmanical literature founded on them were studied by the priests. The Prākrits were certainly posterior to Pāṇini (350 B.C. at the latest) who distinguishes the *laukikabhāshā* or the spoken Sanskrit of ordinary life from *chhāndasa* or poetical language of the Vedas. Again, since Patañjali knew the drama we must assign to his period the separate use of Sanskrit and Prākrit for the different characters when Sanskrit could be used by kings and nobles as intelligible to their inferiors. [On the whole subject see Macdonell, *Vedic Index* (on *Vācha* and *Vrātya*); *Sans. Lit.*, pp. 20-4; *JRAS.*, 1904, pp. 435 f.; Keith, *JRAS.*, 1906, p. 2; and *Ait. Ār.*, pp. 179, 196, 255 (notes). I have here adopted Dr. Keith's conclusions.]